For Your Consideration
by Jezunya
Summary: Collected drabbles written for the Pepperony100 challenge on LJ, in no particular order.
1. Perchance to Dream

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: Perchance to Dream  
Prompt: #60 – Dream  
Rating: K+/PG  
Length: ~400 words

* * *

He doesn't dream very often.

This is a boon, or it would be if he were completely aware of the fact. Memories of his parents float behind his eyes; images of their deaths almost always follow afterward. Schematics for projects current and past, failed attempts and wild successes, though in his dreams the failures sometimes miraculously succeed and his greatest triumphs fall by the wayside, useless. The faces of countless women, lips parted in ecstasy, faces twisted with hate, all smooth skin and shining hair and heavy eyes.

His dreams have become more frequent since he got back.

He didn't dream when he was in the cave. There was hardly time for sleep, and when he did make the time for it, it was tense, dead sleep, always waiting for the sound of the door swinging open, listening for gunfire, expecting the feel of a knife on his throat. The closest he came to dreaming was when his head was under water and the car battery keeping him alive shorted out for half a second and everything went white. Someone was calling his name, but it wasn't real, and he was still alive and still in hell, so it had to be a dream.

He wonders, just before sleeping now, if he never managed to leave that place, if when he dreams of machine gun barrels against his temple and Yinsen bleeding out on a pile of munitions that it means their plan failed and he's still there and he's going to open his eyes and find a cave ceiling above his face. By the time he's drowsy enough to think like that, it's too late to wake himself and he has no choice but to sink back and wait for morning.

Sometimes, he dreams all in white and someone is calling him as the arc reactor in his chest fizzles and wavers between on and off. He dreams of long legs and auburn hair and freckles, of soft hands on his face as SHIELD agents lift him into an unmarked government helicopter. He dreams of waking in his own bed, missing his armor and having gained a few bandages. He dreams that his assistant is slumped in a chair beside him, picturesque even with the mascara streaks running from her eyes.

He smiles, thinking this is a dream he could get used to, and falls back into deep, untroubled sleep.


	2. Pretender

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: Pretender  
Prompt: #98 – Pretend  
Rating: K/G  
Length: ~700 words

* * *

She tried to avoid the news as much as possible, though it had a horrible tendency of sneaking up on her.

She would be watching a little evening tv and a special report would suddenly jump onto the screen, and always, _always_ she would sit mesmerized for several seconds, hungry for any mention of him even as her brain screamed for her to change the channel.

She would be in her car – the car he had bought her – fingers tapping on the steering wheel as some recent pop song she didn't know drew to an end and the radio host would break in with what songs they would be playing next and oh-by-the-way everyone's favorite hero has done it again. It was much easier to change the station when it was just words and noise and not the temptation of actually seeing him.

She would be out with friends – she actually _had_ friends now – and someone at the next table over would have a newspaper or a copy of one of the fortunate magazines to get an interview with him and they wouldn't be able to resist discussing it loudly with everyone around them. Her friends – colleagues, associates, acquaintances who liked her and carefully ignored the stunning references on her resume – would look away, stare into their drinks, shuffle their feet. They could handle being friends with Virginia, but The Infamous Pepper Potts was something else entirely.

It was worse when someone would recognize her – usually some overzealous reporter, but sometimes it was a businessman who'd known them before, someone she would have smiled at and chatted quietly with at some high-end party or benefit. It was always the same kind of horrible when they would inevitably realize their mistake, realize she wasn't the free backstage pass to Iron Man she once was. The widening of the eyes, the slowly backing away, the looking at her like she might break.

Pepper couldn't help snorting at that idea. She wasn't about to break – she was _broken_.

Not that she let it show. Or even thought about it much at all. It was really only in little snatches here and there – just before falling asleep in her dark apartment; in the tiny, still moment between pulling her car door shut and turning the key in the ignition; right after switching the tv off on another Iron Man-themed news report. It was in these little bits and pieces that she could admit to the façade of her life, the lie within a lie.

She didn't know anything about the Iron Man suit, no weaknesses, no special features, no insider dirt. Not really a lie, as he'd no doubt made numerous improvements in the long months stretching between them and she didn't really understand much if any of his engineering before anyway.

She didn't know anything about Tony Stark's personal life. A lie, though she wouldn't really admit it. Tony Stark was a grown man with his own life, one that Pepper Potts was no longer a part of. Not that she'd been a part of his personal life before – she was his assistant, not his babysitter, not his mother, not his girlfriend. Certainly not his girlfriend. Professional, and nothing else. It didn't matter that she knew how he liked his day-old pizza in the morning or that she had an all-too intimate knowledge of the scars lacing his body from his many 'heroic' acts.

She wasn't affected every time he blasted off to go save the world again. Her knuckles didn't clench white around her pen for the whole day until she heard he was back home, safe. She didn't have to make a conscious decision every morning to _not_ drive out to his home and see if she could pick things up right where she'd left them, like nothing had ever happened. She didn't dream about his smile or about dancing out on a darkened balcony. She wasn't in love with him.

She'd always been a terrible liar.


	3. Moving Day

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: Moving Day  
Prompt: #31 - Joke  
Rating: K/G  
Length: ~500 words

* * *

"Is this a joke?" He looked up from the paper, feeling his fingers spasm the tiniest bit, threatening to crumple it in his sudden shock.

His assistant met his surprise straight-faced and bland.

"You… You've got to be kidding…"

He frowned when he still got no more response than a few carefully emotionless blinks.

"Pepper…"

A flicker in her eyes, a slight crack in her professional façade. "Mr. Stark."

Tony pursed his lips, watching her for a long moment before looking away to set the resignation letter down on his desk. He placed his hands on his hips, staring down at it hard. He didn't look back up when he spoke. "Why?"

She moved now, shifting her weight, turning her head to look around his office. Avoiding looking at him. "It seemed appropriate."

_Appropriate._ Tony fought with the sardonic half-smile playing at the corners of his mouth, feeling a weight on his chest that had nothing to do with the metal cylinder embedded in its center. This was it; she'd made her decision, and there would be no going back now.

He sat back on the edge of the desk, hitching one leg over the corner while the other rested comfortably straight down. "You don't have to do this, you know. You could… I mean, we…"

Pepper's lips quirked and her smile was warm when she turned back to him. "It's time to move on, Tony." His eyes followed the way her hands fidgeted, the fingers of her right ghosting over the backs of her left, dropping, returning again.

"Well, yes…" he agreed, watching her hands repeat the motion again. She blushed at his scrutiny when he looked back up at her face, but her hands did not stop their fussing. "But there's really no reason for you to give up your job… or your nice Stark Industries paycheck."

Pepper rolled her eyes, and he saw her hands ball into little fists to stop them from repeating their movement again. "You don't think people will start to wonder just what _exactly_ you're paying me for?"

Tony felt his eyebrows shoot nearly to his hairline and a sly smile spread across his face. "Why, Miss Potts, I do believe you have your mind in the gutter."

She rolled her eyes again, shaking her head, though she was smiling for real now. "You're not going to be able to call me that for much longer, you know."

"I know." He reached out and caught her left hand where it had begun to fidget again. "And it is something I will forever miss," he said seriously, contemplating the small hand in his own, and especially the diamond engagement ring on her fourth finger.

Dark eyes flashed back up to hers and his grin was back in full force. "Though I have to admit that _Mrs. Stark_ has a nice ring to it, too."


	4. Still Beating

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: Still Beating  
Prompt: #54 - React  
Rating: K+/PG  
Length: ~600 words

* * *

The day after the press conference is the hardest, but not for any reason Pepper would have expected.

It comes in the form of a Shield agent breaking through the crowd of reporters camped on Tony's front lawn to call on them just a little after ten in the morning. It's a glorious day outside – one neither of them will see much of, since they're busy hiding from the press and dodging emails and phone calls from Tony's business associates questioning her employer's sanity.

It's not an agent she's met before, though she thinks she may have seen him assisting Agent Coulson in the aftermath of the battle two days ago. He's a tall African American man with the same practiced bland expression of all the agents she's met, though perhaps even less personality left in his face than Coulson has. Jarvis lets him in at Tony's nod – which is really more a shrug than an actual acquiescence – and Pepper meets him in the front entry, the still-pajama-clad superhero trailing along a few steps behind her.

"Ms. Potts, Mr. Stark," the agent greets them, and then introduces himself as Agent Alderman. He's here because they've finished combing through the wreckage from the arc generator explosion – wreckage like the Iron Monger suit, which was carefully whisked away before the press could get their cameras and their claws on it. He doesn't actually say that, but they all know he's not talking about wreckage in terms of bricks and mortar.

"I was instructed to return this to your custody, as we do not currently have a specific interest in analyzing its technology."

Pepper feels Tony tense beside her as Agent Alderman reaches inside his suitcoat and pulls out a fist-sized, cloth-wrapped bundle. She sees the connection cord first, hanging out past the linen handkerchief, and it's like she's been punched in the gut before he even unwraps it because she knows what he's holding and this can't be good, it can't be…

The agent finishes unwrapping the arc generator, retrieved from the fried Iron Monger suit, tucks the handkerchief back inside his coat, and holds the lifeless reactor out to Tony without even the slightest trace of human emotion.

Tony looks at it like it's something foul and deadly, a murder weapon still smeared with a loved one's blood. He looks at it like he's being handed his own still-beating heart. Pepper's fairly certain she's not imagining the greenish cast to his face.

She takes the generator from the agent, not looking at the way Tony's eyes remain wide and ever so slightly glazed. She fumbles for a moment, caught between cradling it – it was his heart, his power, something she put in him with her own two hands – and wanting to touch as little as possible of the backstabbing, traitorous thing. In the end, she just closes her hands around it, hiding it from view as much as she can, and quietly thanks the agent, who nods and exits back through the front door. She doesn't turn until she's sure Jarvis has locked it behind him.

When she does turn, she's already drawing a breath to ask what she should do with it, but Tony speaks before she can.

"Destroy it." He doesn't look at her, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he swallows. "_Please._" His voice is rough.

This time, Pepper doesn't hesitate to do what he asks. She also doesn't resist the urge to scrub her hands clean afterwards.


	5. Practice, Practice

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: Practice, Practice  
Prompt: #24 – Kiss  
Rating: K+/PG  
Length: 222 words

* * *

Pepper Potts, it turns out, is a fabulous kisser.

He's not sure why that surprises him. It's not like he was expecting her to be _bad_ at it. Or like he thought she'd never kissed a man before. But still. Somehow, he'd expected a little more hesitance or shyness or… something. Maybe it's that he was expecting to be the one leading, the one who knew just what to do, the one with all the experience. Maybe he just had a hard time reconciling her usual prim and professional appearance with the idea of _her_ being experienced as well, but the things she's doing with her mouth and her hands and her body seem like the kind of things that would require a lot of practice.

He really doesn't want to think about that.

But maybe that's an incorrect assumption – after all, he didn't practice before building engines as a kid. He watched his dad and he understood and it just _worked_. That's what this is now. Talent. Sweet little Pepper is talented.

He groans and it turns into a humming growl that he's not sure is coming from his throat, the arc reactor sandwiched between them, or from all of his nerve endings coming alive all at once as she does that thing on his neck again…

Yeah… Really, _really_ talented…


	6. I Want the Impossible

Disclaimer: Iron Man and all recognizable characters are property of Marvel and others...not me.

Written for the Pepperony100 challenge, here: pepperony100(dot)livejournal(dot)com

Title: I Want the Impossible (Because It Is Impossible)  
Prompt: #59 – Future  
Rating: K/G  
Length: ~500 words

* * *

He sees them sometimes, always together. Usually in the kitchen. Occasionally, in the living room or even in the dining room. Not in the workshop, because that is his space and his mother has never seen that particular room, but he can see her in every kitchen in the world, even his own.

Their images don't blend, but they sit beside each other – dark tresses and red curls, olive tones and freckly ivory. They're very different, nearly opposites, but they sit across the table from each other peeling or shucking or paring and laughing together in that harmonious way that only women can achieve.

He'd stand in the doorway and watch them, and the house would be full of estrogen, but in a good way. In the way that happens around holidays and birthdays and graduations, in the way that means warm pies and faces smeared with flour and spatulas pointed in his direction ordering him out before he breaks something or makes something explode or steals any more of the food they've worked so hard on.

He'll help when he can – usually washing dishes, because his mother is a woman from another generation and cooking was a woman's territory in her day and still is in her house. Or her son's house. When she's there, it doesn't matter whose house it is, it's her kitchen. Pepper will snicker at him behind her hand and he'll throw water at her from the sponge he's using and Maria Stark will step in to protect the pies and tell them they can have their lovers' spat later. Preferably behind closed doors.

Sometimes, there's a third presence, and it always catches him off guard. She'll step into the room when he least expects it, all bundled redhead energy and large dark eyes, his eyes, his mother's eyes, and fall in beside the other women like it's the most natural thing in the world. She'll steal berries from the bowl on the table while her mother helps her roll out a pie crust and her grandmother starts singing a lullaby in the middle of the day just so that the next generation can learn its words.

She'll lean back and grin at him in their secret way with that sparkle in her eye that lets him know she finds the scene as amusing and endearing as he does, even though she is a part of it and that only makes it all the more amusing and endearing to him. Then she's drawn back into the circle of women, purpled hands dropping berries and juice into the waiting pie tin and singing along with Grandma Stark as she starts to pick up the words.

And Tony will sit back and wait for the vision to end, as it always does, because the one was lost to him long ago and the second isn't really his and probably never will be and so the third can never exist at all. But such are his dreams, and such is the future.


End file.
